Relationships 101
by Winged Scythe
Summary: When most people want to fix problems in a relationship, they go to a counselor. On Radiant Garden, people grab the nearest ear. *Rated for language and content matter*


**AN:** A random idea given to me by Jediempress turned into the fic below. The fic below has now spawned the basis for a casual series about the relationships around Radiant Garden. I have no idea where it will go.  
**Beta'd by:** Jediempress  
**Disclaimer:** I own Harlequin and nothing else. If I did, I wouldn't be worrying about finding a job.

* * *

In Harlequin's opinion, there weren't many downsides to living on her own. Her house was a small one-bedroom, but it had more than enough space to accommodate her interests and hobbies. She had to manage her own finances and buy everything herself, but her job paid well and she'd always been good at sticking to a budget. Her friends were there to help when she needed it and there was almost always someone available if she started feeling isolated.

She had the freedom to make her own decisions and live the way she wanted, and compared to that, the problems of adult life were hardly more than a brief obstacle. If there was anything Harlequin had to complain about, though, it was that living like an adult meant being treated like an adult, and that wasn't always something she wanted. At seventeen years (or fifty-four, but that was complicated…), she didn't have the life experience needed to answer some of the questions she was given. She hadn't gone through years of studying in a given field and she hadn't worked long enough at a job. She didn't have a family and she hadn't raised kids. She had lived through the destruction of her home world, but so had nearly everyone else.

As she flopped onto her couch and absently turned on the TV, Harlequin considered the day she'd had. A water pipe had broken late the night before and while the damage wasn't serious, the people it had affected had been demanding instant solutions. Leon had left to inspect the pipe himself and oversee the repairs, and that had left her alone in their office, desperately trying to answer everyone's questions and keep them placated before things got out of control. More than once, her status as Leon's assistant had been brought up and, more than once, she'd had to defend her ability to handle the work just as well as any them.

Harlequin sighed. There were only so many ways to say, "Leon specifically assigned me this position because he knew I could handle it, now please let me work," and even less since she couldn't cut loose and swear until her face turned blue. Leon would've had her head as a wall ornament if she had.

Luckily, the work day was done and she didn't have any other responsibilities other than let herself relax. Flipping through the channels with a half-critical eye, she finally settled on a cartoon channel and let her brain disengage. Mindless entertainment was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Barely an hour later, the loud slam of a door snapped her out her stupor. For it to sound as loud as it had, the door either had to have been slammed hard enough to break it or it had to have come from next door – from Cloud and Riku's house.

"Well, shit," Harlequin said to the remote in her hand. "This isn't gonna be good."

The window closest to the couch had an almost direct line of vision into their kitchen, and Harlequin hopped over the back so she could peer through it and gain an idea of what had happened. While the blinds on the other window were pulled up and the lights were on, she couldn't see any movement in the kitchen or the adjoining room. Harlequin craned her neck and pressed her face against the window so she could see further towards the driveway, but her sight was blocked by the oak tree in front. There was no way of knowing if Fenrir was still in the drive or if whichever one slammed the door was still outside.

Two sharp knocks resounded against her own door and she pulled away from the window, quickly crossing the room to open it so Riku could storm inside. Raising an eyebrow at his unusual display of anger, she shut the door and leaned against it as Riku paced around the coffee table.

"So…" ventured Harlequin, after several seconds. "What –"

"He's being a damn prick!" said Riku vehemently. "He can't pull his mind away from his issues and mistrust long enough to think that maybe, just maybe, I know what I'm doing and everything will be okay! It's not like I haven't been through worse and Sora's going to be there the whole time, but all he focuses on is that I'm going somewhere without him and therefore I must not trust him enough! How can he not understand that after four years, I'm not going anywhere? If I was going to have left him, I'd have done ages ago, probably after everything was back to normal and our heads were screwed back on straight! But no, I ask him not to come with me and now I'm just some kid who doesn't know anything about how the real world works!" Riku was gripping his hair by the time he finished.

"– did Cloud do that set you off?" Harlequin finished. "Riku, I love you man, but I'm gonna need _so_ much back story if I'm gonna understand anything you just said." She pushed away from the door and walked over to him, keeping a comfortable distance between them. "Why don't you sit down and start with wherever you and Sora are going?"

Riku obligingly dropped down onto the couch and tilted his head so it was resting against the back. Harlequin settled herself cross-legged on the coffee table and waited patiently for him to gather his thoughts.

"King Mickey called us the other day. He's having some sort of a conference and apparently a few of the delegates are saying they won't come if Sora and I aren't there. Mickey's trying to set up relations between some of them and it's important for inter-world commerce, so it's not really much of an option for us. Neither of us minds, we know how important these things are, but Mickey also invited Sephiroth to come since a couple worlds need help with their militaries."

Harlequin winced. "I take it Cloud knows."

"Yep."

"Not happy?"

"Not at all."

"I thought they were at least neutral to each other now? That's what Zack said, and Aerith didn't correct me when I asked."

Riku shook his head. "They're neutral in some areas, but in others… It's like a baking soda bomb."

Harlequin nodded in understanding. There was too much history between the two for them to ever be completely fine with one another. "So, is Cloud not happy that Sephiroth's going to this conference with you, or is he not happy that you're even going?"

"I'm really not sure. I know he gets bored out of his mind at anything diplomatic, so I told him I thought he'd be better off staying at home while I was gone for the week. He seemed like he was taking it well until I mentioned Sephiroth, and then things just went downhill fast."

"And the bit about trust?"

"…What?"

"When you were ranting," Harlequin elaborated, "you mentioned something Cloud not trusting you?"

"Oh yeah. That." A dark look crossed Riku's face and he moved his head from the back of the couch so he could cradle it with both hands. "Cloud also seems to think that since I suggested he stay here, I don't trust him anywhere else," he said into his hands. "Apparently, my trust only applies in places I know other people can keep an eye on him. Apparently, I don't trust him to behave himself when faced with something he doesn't like. Apparently, I don't trust him to not mess around with someone in my absence. And apparently, he believes that I don't trust him even though we've been together for four years."

"Does he… have a reason for thinking that way?"

Riku's head snapped up and he fixed Harlequin with an incredulous glare. "_What_?"

"I'm not saying I believe that!" said Harlequin quickly, raising her hands in defense. "It's just, in my experience, this kind of thing only comes up when one of the people in the relationship has reason to believe that the other is or will be unfaithful, and gets defensive and tries to turn it around. I know you're not the type of person who sleeps around, and the only person I can see you possibly having sex with is Sora, and you two are practically brothers so that would have to be like incest and that's a whole other problem unto itself –"

She stopped abruptly as Riku leaned forward and covered her mouth. "First of all, thank you for believing in me," he said carefully. "Second, no, I have not given Cloud any reason to believe I will be unfaithful. That is something he came up with and I have no idea why he believes it. Third, if you _ever_ mention me and Sora having sex again, I will do something to you that will be highly unpleasant and most likely result in your third death. Understand?" Harlequin nodded several times and he removed his hand from her mouth. "Good."

A minute passed before Harlequin worked up the nerve to speak again. "I'm guessing that this thing with you leaving and this sudden lack of trust caused the two of you to get into a nasty argument that degenerated into attacks on each other's characters?"

"Maybe. I think so. Hell, I don't know." Riku looked honestly lost as he stared just past Harlequin. "Things have just been weird between us for about a month now. I don't know which of us started it or why, but we've been sniping and nagging at each other more in the last three weeks than we have in four years." He rubbed a palm over his eyes and sighed heavily. "Do you think… do you think maybe we've reached the end?"

"Of your relationship? No!" Harlequin slid from the coffee table and knelt on the floor, placing her hands over Riku's knees. "Every couple fights, Riku, it's a fact of life. There's gonna be rough patches, but I'd think that after being able to maintain a relationship through being swallowed by the darkness and almost no contact for a year, you two would be able to handle them. I mean, what's one fight compared to that? Especially since I think there was some major miscommunication going on."

She angled her head and tugged on his jeans so he would look directly at her. "You said you two have been having problems for a month now. What's changed in the last couple of months that might have had an effect on your relationship?"

"I don't… I don't know. Nothing's coming to mind…."

"Then think about for a bit." Harlequin patted his leg and stood up. "You want me to make you any coffee or something?"

Riku shook his head. "I'm good."

"Well, I'm still gonna make myself some."

Harlequin heard Riku chuckle softly behind as she walked to the kitchen and she smiled faintly, pleased that she had managed to get a positive reaction out of him. She knew she didn't have a lot of experience with relationships but she was willing to do what she had to in order to make theirs survive. Both Cloud and Riku were better men from their time together and were definitely happier with each other than apart. If she had to dig and pry to find out what was going on, then dig and pry she would. Zack and Sora would probably kill her if she didn't.

She glanced over at Riku several times as she filled and started her coffee pot, and every time he was deep in thought, eyes narrowed in concentration. He had moved from sitting hunched over to having one arm flung over the back of the couch, head angled to the ceiling, and every so often his fingers tapped against the fabric. Clearly Riku was carefully analyzing each memory for details that could help, and Harlequin wished him luck. For all they knew, the whole mess could have started over a misconstrued sentence.

Riku said he hadn't wanted anything, but Harlequin still filled a glass with water after she fixed a mug of coffee. She set the glass on the side table closest to him and resettled on the coffee table, taking small sips from her mug as she waited for him to finish his analysis. Five minutes and a third of her way through her coffee, Riku groaned and banged his head lightly against the couch.

"Thought of something then?" Harlequin asked.

"I've been talking to Sephiroth," said Riku. "I've been talking to him for maybe a month and half, after he helped out with that computer glitch."

"You think that's what's been causing the problems between you and Cloud? Talking to Sephiroth?"

"Cloud told me himself that he considers me to be the best thing that ever happened to him. If he thought that maybe Sephiroth was threatening that…"

"By talking to you? Sephiroth is going to threaten Cloud by _talking_ to you?" The disbelief Harlequin was feeling heavily coated her words. "What kind of fucked up reasoning gets him to t_hat_? He should know better than to believe that you would fall victim to words spoken by his ex nemesis when said ex nemesis is back to being good friends with his best friend Zack."

"It's the only thing that makes sense, Harley," said Riku. "I'm not saying I understand it, but it's the only thing that's changed in the last couple of months. And I didn't mean threaten as in hurting him; I meant it more as though he's afraid of having Sephiroth become a more permanent fixture in his life again."

Harlequin stared at him for solid thirty seconds before speaking. "…You just _had_ to choose the one with the paranoia, didn't you? You couldn't have chosen the one with the leather or the one with the really awesome personality, no, you chose the one with the _issues_."

Riku immediately bristled. "Cloud is not paranoid."

"Maybe not clinically, but you'd think after what, ten years he'd be over most of it by now."

A knock on the door cut off whatever reply Riku had, and Harlequin slid off the coffee table and onto her feet to answer it. She peered through the eyehole first, went to open the door, then paused and looked again. When the person outside remained the same under a second inspection, Harlequin all but yanked the door open and summed up her feelings in two words: "Fuck, Cloud."

Cloud raised an eyebrow at the greeting. "Riku's here, right?"

"Yeah." There was a spilt second of indecision, but Harlequin stepped back and let Cloud through the doorway. He walked directly up to Riku and stopped just short of him, but while his pace didn't suggest anything other than normal, Harlequin noticed the slight twitch of his left hand that indicated he was nervous. "I'm just gonna let you talk," she said as she grabbed her mug and retreated to her bedroom, leaving the door cracked wide enough that she could still see and hear everything.

"Mind if I sit down?" Cloud asked, gesturing to the spot next to Riku.

Riku shrugged and reached for the glass of water next to him. "I don't care."

Cloud settled on the couch and stretched his legs out under the coffee table, while Riku took a couple slow sips of water. Neither of them made a move to talk, and as the minutes stretched on the silence became more and more tense. Finally, as the level of tension nearly became palpable, Riku softly said, "I'm not a kid."

"I know." Cloud scrubbed a hand over his face before loosely gripping his knees. "You haven't been one for a long time, and I shouldn't have said that you were. I shouldn't have said any of the things I did. I know you trust me."

"Then why did you say I didn't?" Riku turned his body so he could face Cloud. "I've been with you for fours years, Cloud, I trust you more than anyone. Why would you think I'd stopped?"

"It's… it's stupid. I know that now, I had it practically beaten into me by Zack." The fingers over Cloud's knees tightened until they were clenching the fabric of his pants. "I just – You've always wanted me to come with you when you've had to leave, unless it was specifically something only you and Sora could do. You've never asked me to stay behind for something so routine, and then when you mentioned Sephiroth…"

Riku's voice was harsh. "I didn't ask you to stay behind because of him."

"I know."

"Do you?"

Cloud sighed and let go of his knees. He hunched over until his forearms were flat against his thighs. "Sephiroth is going to go because his military genius is needed on some developing worlds. He's going to have very little to do with the conference itself and even if he is, he is not nor is he ever going to try to sabotage my relationship with you."

A corner of Riku's mouth turned up. "Was that Zack or Leon talking?"

"Leon. Zack used more metaphors."

"I bet he did."

A moment passed before Cloud spoke again. "I was jealous, Riku. Don't ask me why, I really don't know, but the fact that you were talking to Sephiroth so often, added to the fact that you were leaving with him and not me, just completely threw me off. I don't handle my emotions well and it was easier to turn them into anger." He turned his head so he could meet Riku's stare. "I'm sorry. For all of it."

Riku nodded once, the action jerky. The next second he was tugging on Cloud's shoulder and leaning in to press a dry kiss to his lips. One of Cloud's hands reached up to stroke down the length of Riku's hair and settled on the back of his neck as he gently pressed back against the kiss. They broke apart a moment later and Riku grinned, tugging affectionately on a blond spike.

"I think I can forgive you. However, I might need a little insight into just how sorry you are…" he trailed off meaningfully as he tugged on the spike again.

Cloud twisted his body on the couch and pulled Riku into his lap, resuming a slow stroke through his hair as Riku started kissing along his jaw line. He nipped lightly at the skin covering Cloud's pulse and grinned once more as he heard Cloud groan. He laughed softly when Cloud pulled his head back and fiercely claimed his lips, but his attention was soon sidetracked and he more than willingly returned the passion coming from Cloud. The hand Cloud had previously left against Riku's side was just beginning to slide its way down the other body when they were loudly interrupted.

"Oh for the love of _god_, not on my couch you aren't!"

Harlequin stood in her bedroom doorway with arms crossed and an expression promising future payback if they didn't stop what they were doing. "This place, my house, is staying pure until I bring home my own boyfriend. You two are _not_ going to spoil that, regardless of much either of you love sex. Go to your own damn place for that."

"Harley, we weren't going to do anything on your couch –" Riku tried explaining.

"The hell you weren't, I saw where that hand was going." Harlequin walked several steps into the room and pointed a finger at the front door. "Out. Go. Have fun somewhere else. Go to Cid's garage again for all I care – just leave before I throw you out myself."

Riku rolled his eyes but dutifully climbed off Cloud as the other man rose to his feet. He accepted the hand up Cloud gave him and turned back to Harlequin with a mischievous smirk. "Are you serious about this being a pure house?"

"OUT! Out, out, out, out, _out_!"

Riku laughed loudly as he led Cloud out the front door. Harlequin slammed the door shut behind them and locked it, then looked around room.

"I have _got_ to get a dog."


End file.
